Can’t afford Nginx? You have options!

Alternative Nginx SolutionsSome background info: Last month, I had a hectic schedule (that’s why no posts last month) and worked on multiple websites at the same time. A few of them were on a shared hosting environment. As you know nothing can be installed on a shared host. Rest of them were being hosted in a managed webhost. A managed host doesn’t support third party tools including Nginx & Varnish. Additionally a managed web hosting provider hardly allows an outsider to install these too. Moreover, setting up php-fpm on a managed hosting is an easy way to mess up things.

Almost all those sites had more static content than dynamic content. Basically, Nginx is known for serving static files faster than Apache (there are other advantages with Nginx too, but that’s for another day). As only Apache was available in those managed webhosts and in those shared webhosts, basically, I put forward three options to my clients to get Nginx in an affordable way … Continue reading “Can’t afford Nginx? You have options!”

Script to Install and Upgrade Nginx from Source

Nginx logoNginx is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server and reverse proxy. It is widely used in many really high traffic websites such as WordPress.com. It is also used here in tinywp.in since the beginning. There are plenty of methods to install it on any VPS or dedicated servers. The official installation instructions available from the official wiki. Here I show you my own script to compile it from source, install and upgrade using a bash script. Continue reading “Script to Install and Upgrade Nginx from Source”

Remove Query String on CSS & JS Files

How to Remove Query String on CSS & JS FilesHave you seen WordPress version number as a query string after every CSS and JS file? You are not alone. It is easy to remove that string, even though there is little documentation available in the codex. Please note that it is different from what WP-Minify plugin adds in the minified version of the CSS and JS file. Having the query doesn’t allow certain browsers to cache the CSS and JS files. Once removed, it offers performance benefits on those browsers. Moreover, who would want to expose the version of WordPress at the end of these files? Continue reading “Remove Query String on CSS & JS Files”

W3 Total Cache Alternatives

Cachify Logo for the post entitled W3 Total Cache plugin alternativesThere is no doubt that W3 Total Cache has so many options to optimize any WordPress site than any other caching plugin. Even if you use all the features it offers there are other ways to achieve the same, manually, with better efficiency and better results.

Additionally, if you have used W3 Total Cache plugin for at least a year, especially on a multisite, you’d know that it is not a perfect plugin. As with any other plugin out there, it has its own bugs, does some nasty things, some unsatisfied users, had some security flaws on some hosts and a lot more. What’s more, it is not actively developed as of now. The latest development log shows that it’s been 5 months since the last commit with the number of unanswered questions growing by every day in the WordPress support forums.

Updates:

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How To Benchmark A WordPress Blog?

Blitz Logo - a benchmarking toolI come across this question on benchmarking WordPress in almost every optimization project I work with. So, here is a quick post to make the answer available to everyone (who might ask this question in the future).

Benchmarking can be done in two areas. Firstly the server benchmarking. It is the ability of the server to manage N number of concurrent visitors to the site. The other is application (WordPress) benchmarking. It depends on how quickly it can generate a complete webpage for the server to serve the visitor.

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